


Ghosts

by Alexej_Axis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Blood and Injury, Cisgender, Cussing, Friendship, Gender Dysphoria, Mental Breakdown, Multi, Post-Apocalypse, Smoking, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 23:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexej_Axis/pseuds/Alexej_Axis
Summary: Deep within the Scarred Lands, in a time long after the Apocalypse tore the world apart, and not to long after the Aether glued it back together, Dark Horse, a worse-for-wear looking war veteran is contemplating about life when he's suddenly forced to face the ghosts of a future past.***Last revision June 8th 2019***"Ghosts" is a short story that is meant to be a flavor text in the world of my D.E.A.D. universe - soon to be available as a TTRPG. So new readers are very much appreciated and encouraged to leave comments or pm me if they feel that something doesn't quite makes sense.  I am working on a glossary at the moment to be able to link special terms directly from the text so this story makes more sense to first-time readers and to be used in the appendix of my TTRPG.Music: Akira Yamaoka - Your Rain





	Ghosts

***

 

The full moon looked like it was covered in dust; speckled with a pale, red patina of sorrow. Weary, the Old Drifter made their way through the sky, stoic and sore. Mankind had left rusty wounds on their surface during the past decades of war and destruction, right before the world ended. Apparently, they had grown fond of their scars, or rather, unwilling or unable to forget. Like so many who were still roaming this forlorn place. A solemn glow was eradicating from the Drifter’s expressionless face, illuminating the scattered clouds stampeding through the night sky like wild horses.

 _Like above, so below,_ _they say._ Dark Horse was sitting on top of his rusty excuse of a pick-up truck, sipping away on a bottle of vodka and watching his name sake animals roam through the tall, patchy grass that sprouted among the industrial ruins of a city half buried in dirt - long forgotten by history. A typical scenario in the Scarred Lands - the savage and underdeveloped buffer zone between three rivaling empires and ‘Freedom's last Resort’ by popular opinion of its inhabitants. He cherished the thought of being far enough from the next battlefront where some military man with an existential crisis was at it, trying to conquer that ‘free spirit’, yet close enough to Alliance territory to benefit from the luxury that comes with the influence of civilization. _War brings prosperity after all - how much you benefit from it just depends on how well versed you are in the act of cowardice,_ he thought to himself.

And he would know. He had been around, after all. He was probably as savage and untamed as this land, his short hair wild and all over the place, resembling the color of freshly burned ashes, stubbornly refusing to shine, even in broad daylight. Yet, in a night like this it eradicated a faint, pale glow, reflecting the crimson colour of the moon with ghostly luminance.

Lost in thought, he winced into the distance; a beardless face that looked far too young for a man in his thirties and far too withered by worry to be any younger than the moon themselves. Freckles scattered on his summer visage where almost indistinguishable from the dust and dirt that had settled on his skin from the day’s ride.

His dark brown eyes were observing the wild horses roaming about anxiously in this abandoned graveyard of human ambition - unable to find rest, but evenly drawn to the promise of shelter from the dust storms among the ruins. He couldn't blame them. The place had a weird aura, he could feel it. But he had made camp here nonetheless, three miles out of town, as he appreciated the severe lack of any human presence, which he loathed even more than that of ghosts from the past.

In stark contrast to the buzzing little town full of drifters, cutthroats, and cattle drivers a mile away, who all seemed to fall right in on each other, Horse appreciated the quiet. Driftwood as it was adequately called, nestled quaintly down by the widest part on the river bench, was brightly lit and noisy enough that he could see the lights dancing in the distance behind him in the corner of his eye and still hear what would be a crescendo of communal past time as muffled, static moaning.

He had good reasons to not get too close. With the dusty, greyish overall and tool belt, both flagged with a serial number and a well-known crest in these lands, exposing a variety of valuable and well-mended pliers, screwdrivers and wrenches of all sizes, it was easy to guess his profession as a member of the mechatronics corp of the Alliance Forces.

Or Ex-Profession for that matter.

Alliance deserters always had it rough, for everyone knew they had special abilities but also, a death sentence tattooed on their neck. Horse’s hand did rub the scruff that he had deliberately let grow out down the back of his head involuntarily. Ally military didn’t take lightly to those who fled their ranks. Any old patrol might shoot him on sight once they noticed he was a deserter, so he better not come near them or risk annihilation.

And so close to the Alliance border, it wasn’t far off that a soldier or two might have joined the singing and dancing at the inn in this small off-road town of miners and lumberjacks. So he better kept his distance; it wasn’t worth the risk anyway.

 

Horse had never been fond of crowds. He had been able to convince his travel companion to pass him a bottle before he went all out to town himself, though. So he was enjoying his first liquor in a long while, just trying to cherish the moment of peace and quiet out under the stars, but these pesky thoughts just wouldn't leave him alone.

 _Gotta do more drinking then I s’pose,_ he thought. C’mon boy, you know how to do this right. _You’re a veteran in drinking your trouble away. They taught you well at the southern front._ Horse clutched the collar of his worn, mutilated uniform, trying to brace himself against the shivering cold of this autumn wind pushing against him like an obnoxious whore, when he heard a rustling sound behind him.

The bottle fell. Horse was on his feet and pointing his rifle at the person moving towards him before the liquor spilled on the ground.

 

"Who GOES THERE?!" he barked. The horses bolted.

 

"It just me," a familiar voice issued with an amused undertone. Horse stood tall, finger coiled around the trigger and winced as the darkness revealed the frame of a hunching figure, shuffling towards the camp.

"You idiot. I might've just shot you, which is exactly what your mother should've done when your father put his cock inside her one time too many," Horse mumbled when Konstantin approached him. The mechanic had a habit of insulting his friends in quite colorful ways. He also had no friends according to his own records. "What is it with you and your bullshit, crow? Sneaking up on me like that from behind? I fucking spilled my liquor because of you… I thought you were a walking corpse. Why are you moving like a dead man?"

"You mean I scared the shit out of you," the other man let out a miserable sound that might have been laughter if it hadn't been interrupted by a painful groan. "I hurt my head," he added in a hoarse voice, then touched his face and ruffled through his rather short, messy, pitch-black hair as if he wanted to convince himself that his head was still on his shoulders.

Horse sighed and stopped himself from kicking the bottle out of anger. Instead, he exhaled deeply, strapped the rifle back on to his back and picked up the empty glass vessel. Side-eying his friend, he rubbed the bottleneck with his sleeve and put it to his lips to savour the last sip of his evening pleasure.

 

"I didn't expect you to be back tonight. I expected you to embarrass yourself horribly in town while chatting up a nice girl, piss drunk, and then end up in bed with her brother or something. Also, you didn't answer my question," he said, after he swallowed and gently tucked the empty bottle away. There was enough waste in this wasted world, he didn’t have to add to it. “There are corpses about, Kostja,” Horse continued, “how do I know you didn’t get yourself shot and joined them in your endless stupidity?”

"Relax, you know I cannot go to hell twice, I'm a Sinner already. And Lust ain't my sin." Konstantin bumped into the truck and moaned, rubbing his knee. “Besides, it was your shouting that spooked the horses.If there would be a walking corpse about, they’d been long gone before that.”

"Yeah about that Lust thing? I am not too sure about that considering how much you screw around. But that’s entirely missing the point, crow. Next time how about you announce yourself when you come back to camp? I might’ve shot you dead like any old dog. My eyes aren't that sharp, Jack, especially in the dark. So you know I might've shot first and saved looking at what for later. Along with looking for gold teeth." Horse lifted the oil lamp from the ramp of the truck and lit it with his Zippo. He looked up from it and right into the other man's face who was leaning in on the ramp of the truck now, and froze.

"Heaven’s Hell Kostja...what happened to you?"

"I told ye I hurt my head." Konstantin looked at him with a reddish, bruised face. His left eye had almost vanished behind a lump of swollen tissue and it bore a deep cut onto the brow above. Blood had clogged up the lid and nose. As he tried to force a smile, his lips didn't appreciate the socializing effort and cracked open with a wet thud. The blood on his face and shirt had almost dried as a new stream dribbled down his chin, creating curious patterns on the white cotton fabric.

"Ouch," he muttered, followed by a muffled: "You should have seen the other guys." His left hand was full of cuts and bruises as he raised it to touch his lip. He winced and made an effort to keep his eyes open. He smelled like a deserter who slept under a Saloon counter for a couple of nights after being on the run for a week – with insomnia.

Horse let out a deep sigh, left the oil lamp on the cabin's roof, bend down to remove the covers from the truck bed and put the rifle away to look for the first aid kit.

"Sit the fuck down, Jack-o. I'll be right with you." Konstantin didn't say anything in return but sat down; just collapsed into a pile of human rubble, like a soldier waiting to be dismissed to pass out.

 

When Horse had finally found the water canister and a half-clean rag, he made the few steps over the ramp to crouch down beside his friend and couldn't tell if Konstantin was giggling or weeping. He figured a little bit of both. The mechanic started to clean the other man's face and tend to his wounds in silence. Horse noticed that Konstantin’s gun and his knife were still on him, but his leather jacket was gone.

And in a world like this, the jacket itself was worth more than a gun. Guns all came in one size-fits-all; and they didn't keep you warm at night - but a good and fitting jacket was way harder to find.

Horse winced at his friend, pulled out a pre-rolled cigarette from a metal case in his overall, and shoved it into the corner of his mouth to light it. Illuminated by the red and orange flames of the oil lamp and the burning weed, Horse tend to his friend’s wounds, sharing the rolly with a surprising tenderness while Konstantin sat there and sobbed heavily every now and then.

 _So young and so much trouble,_ Horse thought to himself. In the maybe six months they had been travelling together, Kostja had told him at least three different life stories of himself, all with various ages attached to them, but the weathered veteran was no fool. He’d eat his toolbelt if the boy was any older than 19 summers. Yet those amber eyes had seen Hell, a kind of Hell that Horse only occasionally gazed into, and it left him terrified every time. He didn’t know how the boy could bear to go through that over and over and over again and still maintain his benign temper. And it was exactly that childish naiveté that always got them in trouble. W _hat a waste of time, actually,_ he thought to himself as he felt the muscles in his jaw tensen. _So much power and potential. If I was born with that predicament, I would have turned out right, different, stronger. Wouldn’t I?_

The icy wind pushed against their bodies and Horse felt longing for warmth. They both shivered. _That filthy whore of a heart,_ Horse thought. _It’s growing colder by the minute._

 

"You're piss-drunk," Horse broke the silence, while wrapping the last bandage around the boys hand.

"I know."

"Why are you doing this to yourself, Kostja?"

"I don't know."

Horse sighed. "You need stitches and I ain't no fucking nurse. We don't have money for a Stitcher. Not even a bad one, not right now. I think THIS time, you'll keep that scar...You happy now? You ruined your beautiful face, finally." Horse didn’t make an effort to conceal the boiling anger inside of him.

When Konstantin remained silent, he got up, grabbed the empty canister and walked down to the river to fill it with fresh water. When he came back, he sat down next to his friend and washed his face, carefully, while chewing on a small branch of wood because they had no tobacco left. They sat there for some time, while the Old Drifter watched them with hazy eyes through the clouds. The cold kept creeping in.

 

"I went for the wrong girl," Kostja said, finally. Horse made a grunting, disapproving sound, but the other man continued: "Then I went for the wrong guy to make up for it."

"You could've messed them up,“ the mechanic rebuted.

"Yeah..." Kostja tried to smile again. „I could've.“

"No, Konstantin, I mean it. I’m sure there wasn’t a single soul in there who was.. LIKE you! But you never do," Horse sat back, nibbling frantically on the wooden stick hanging from the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah," Konstantin touched his lips in as if he was disbelieve they were still attached to his face. “I kinda… forgot.” His head slowly tilted from left to right and back again.

Horse rubbed his arms in a desperate attempt to keep the chill out. He didn't need a Stitcher to make sense of this. "You've got yourself a concussion, idiot  Well done. I hope you don't puke in my lap tonight. They took your jacket by the way. Did you notice? You let that happen" It wasn't a question as much as an accusation. “You let that happen to us, really. I’m sure you took all our money to the pub, didn’t you? And it was probably in there?” He spat on the ground with disapproval and the branch vanished in the darkness that was crawling between their feet and messing with their hearts. Horse hopped on the truck and pressed his back against the rim, messing with his own hair. He shivered and hugged his knees, desperation filling his lungs like liquid, making it hard to breathe.

 

“You know how hard it is for me to put myself out there? You know what I will have to do if we keep having a dry patch like that.” Horse’s voice, broke away, into a higher pitched tone and he cursed as he ran his hand over his mouth.

Kostja gave a solemn nod. “I don’t want you to do that, though.” His eyes were shimmering wet in the fading light of the dying oil lamp and Horse could feel the unspoken words and long held-back thoughts between them take shape somewhere in the [ Abyss ](http://phpbb.metaplot03.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1194&p=3931#p3931).

“I just...can’t, Horse. I...I don’t know, I-I…”

“Well why did you take the money then, huh?”

Konstantin didn’t answer.

“That wasn’t just YOUR money, crow. And it’s been a while since we had a job that paid well.” He hugged himself harder, unwilling to cave in against the feeling of despair. Thoughts like these were so dangerous out here in the dark; he knew that... but he couldn't fight them. He felt his knees press against his chest, and for a moment he felt his female body shape; so unwanted, so inappropriate, so unsettling.  

“Bad things happen when I turn to that side of me,” Kostja whimpered.

“Well bad things happen when you don’t!”

 _They're getting inside of me_ , he thought, but could not fight the ghosts crawling under his skin. How had he not seen them coming? The shadows so long, threatening, reaching out for his soul. Suddenly, he was aware of them, he was all surrounded but he couldn't reach out, couldn't focus or make up his mind.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken our money. I just need to get away from it all, I-I’m having a really hard time focussing lately, like, after the last job,” Kostja stammered. “Y-you know wh-what happens to me if I keep tapping into that kind of power.”

"Why the fuck are you doing this to yourself, Kostja? You're a fucking excuse for a man, you know that?" He heard himself speak, dislocated; the words rolling from his tongue like beads falling from a snapped rosary. He stared, as if he was looking were they'd gone, but he was numb, too numb to reach out for them or make an effort to keep them from tumbling down. “You should be ashamed of yourself. At least you ARE a man! And stop whining about the repercussions you have to face for being strong and taking advantage of it! I would KILL to be able to do things like that!” He felt himself getting up and his hands balling into fists.

 

"You should know better than bringing us in such a bad situation. You go out there and you drink, you gamble and you FUCK whatever you fancy and most of the time, you get into trouble and you do not even do a fucking thing about it when they're after you. It's as if you WANT to die." Dark Horse turned around and walked a few meters,jumped off the truck,  started pacing up and down, panting like a cornered animal.

He felt the anger growing inside of him like a tumor, and kicked one of the wheels for release. Losing his cool like that was the worst, but he couldn't handle it anymore. He felt his face getting hot, his stomach knotting up...and other parts inside of him. _This place has Ghosts and now we are fucked, because they are inside of me and I can do nothing because I am just a mere Lamb! Why didn't I see them before? Or did Konstantin bring them here?! With all his sorrow and self-destructive bullshit?_

 

Horse turned around and growled: "You can do all those things and have all those fancy powers, but you rarely use them. You keep telling me and yourself some bull about having to assemble this card deck again as if it would patch up the fucking world! HAH! It's the most important thing, apparently, but you can't even explain to me what it does. You're so obsessed with it, with your sparkling eyes and shit, you almost had me believe in you!" He ruffled through his own hair, panting. He felt tears in his eyes and tried to fight the anger, but he couldn't. _It must be the Ghosts,_ he thought. _I have to fight them, I...can't…tear up like this._

 

He looked up just to bump into Konstantin who had gotten up and stood close to him, eye-to-eye. With a surprised sound, Horse stepped back and tried to calm down, but his face was already wet and his eyes were pitchblack. He rubbed his face, frantically, because he couldn't see...not really see the world around him anymore, just all the despair and anger he felt.

 

"Horse," Kostja's voice was soft, but firm. Something to hold on to. "Stay with me."

He felt warm hands grab his cold shoulders with a strong, but gentle grip. He tried to pull away, at first, even lunched out with his fists, but then quickly realized that he needed that warmth.

“Repercussions, Horse. We all have a price to pay for what we decide to do. And my powers come at great cost. For everyone, not just me.” He focused on his friend's voice and touch to find his way back into this world and drive out the Ghosts who had creeped into him. “The world isn’t exactly...fair,” Konstantin continued with a tremble in his voice, suddenly wise beyond his years, “You know that best of all, of course. But you taught me, that you are what you are, no matter of your looks or what others gossip or think is right. And that’s why I am truly sorry. I owe you so much and I betrayed your trust by taking what was OURS, not mine to keep. But I can’t budge when it comes to my decision to not hurt the Lambs; for II am touched by the Beast.”

 

Horse shook his head and felt the shadows leave his heart...at least the extra ones that hadn't been with him for so long, their roots lay deep within his heart's unfulfilled desire and he knew pretty fair well that they would always come back for they found plenty of fertile ground there.

With shaking fingers, he felt his body as if to check if new parasites had attached themselves to him - even though he knew that this wasn't how it worked. But it kept his hands busy. After a couple of minutes, he looked up, calm again, exhaling deeply. His eyes widened for a moment as he saw the Manmoth standing right next to him in his [ EGO](http://phpbb.metaplot03.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1194&p=3935#p3935)form. The towering, slender, silent figure with their black pelt, their limb, silken wings wrapped tightly around their shoulders, had extended the lower pair of their arms to hold him, gently.

"For fucks sake," Horse hissed, trying to sound annoyed to cover up the tremble in his voice as he jumped and freed himself from the creature's embrace. He was struggling to breathe as the Sinner's [ Aura ](http://phpbb.metaplot03.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1194&p=3931#p3931) brushed against his soul with a January's night's cool caress. Feeling small and overwhelmed for a moment, Horse forced himself to losen his shoulders, think with focus and opened his third eye.

 

The Manmoth, that powerful devilish creature, who had been his boyish friend and sorry-excuse for a master-of-none gunslinger just a moment ago, stood there and looked at him with his large, unmoving compound eyes. Horse didn't know what to make of this. It wasn't the first time he saw Konstantin racing into his soul and turn the beast he was inside out. But something was off.

Horse was still trembling with chills, so he didn't move, didn’t break the gaze. The ghosts could leap at them any second now... 

"I made them go away," Kostja said without moving any part of his face. In this form, his voice seemingly carried no emotion and came with a weird high pitched noise, almost like a squeaking hiss or scratching sound. Horse knew him long enough to be receptive and somewhat make sense the monster's voice. The ash-haired man didn't need to see actual human facial expressions on his friend to read into the slight movement of the moth's antennas and shifts in its posture.

_My friend...my partner...did I ever say that to him? Speak it out loud? Can he read me like I think I can read him when he is like that? Or are we just fools on a journey to nowhere._

Dark Horse's third eye did open, a faint, purple glow on his foreheas. Although he himself was no Sinner, he had this special gift that made him see and feel things normal mortals could not comprehend, even when they saw them with their own eyes. The Moth shifted towards him, moving with the bizarre grace of leaves rustling in the wind. Their wings unwrapped from their shoulders now, dragging on behind them like a cloak; dusty, tattered and lifeless.

"It was my fault that they came here in the first place," the Moth said. "I apologize."

Horse didn't move. He felt awful for his weakness just moments ago, but he couldn't help but feeling anger welling up within him, yet again. Something was not right, and they weren't off the hook yet. He still felt the bulges on his chest with every breath, the weakness in his soft flesh, the tremble in his voice that bothered him beyond grief, but all that shouldn't matter now. It could not. He was standing in front of the only person who had ever truly _believed in him_ , although they knew the truth.

"They're gone, I promise." The moth spoke as if they had read the other man's mind and raised one of their four arms. "I destroyed them..."

"By taking them inside of you," Horse finished the sentence. His third eye was wide awake now and nothing clouded its vision...there was no way NOT to see the dark patterns and scars on his friend's soul.

For a moment, there was only silence between them.

Then the moth nodded, just barely.

"Yes."

And then silence again.

Horse couldn't stand the deafening void separating him from this creature that was his friend - and wasn't. Konstantin, the gypsie boy with that charming, sly smirk, soft, dark eyes and wiry, black hair was still in there, somewhere. But when he turned, there was something else that came to the surface and took control. And this being, that lived in the boy's soul, it was what made him wise beyond his years sometimes but it was also the reason why he needed to get away from it all. It didn't have a gender, it didn't have the need to eat or sleep and it had power over the strings of fate.

Their name was Atropos.

Their dark compound eyes were doors to the abyss. Their tattered wings, now draped around their body like a priest's robe could spread to touch the stream of eternal thoughts. And their dusty, soft coat was always rustled by the movement of ghosts and shadows, craving Atropos' presence. The towering figure raised one of their four arms and spoke:

"You are right. I AM a sorry excuse for a Sinner. " They looked into the palms of their secondary hands. "I barely accomplish anything useful because I cannot cope with the gifts I have...I believe them to be a curse. Yet I try to make the best of it. It's good you are there to remind me, whenever I fail," they turned around and looked at the other man. "...and to pick me up when I fall."

 

There was a long pause, or maybe, Horse just felt it took forever until he sucked in the air with a sigh and finally brought it over himself to speak his mind: „Why do you keep ruining yourself like that for others? It's apparently not worth it... People hardly ever thank you, no they spit at you or even worse...it just doesn't look like the world is changing.“

"She DOES change!“ The sudden sharpness in the Moth's tone was upsetting, tingled in the Horse's ears like a sharp hiss from behind; even if he was looking right into that expressionless face. He flinched but not just at the tone itself, but at the utter desperation it carried. Atropos made a step towards him, closing the gap between them physically and emotionally. „I have seen the world die, twice; no, eleven times. I see her die and resurrect and how she's reborn, again and again. I've seen the Maculate Conception! Transformation beyond imagination. Believe me, it's more violent, blasphemous and horrific than her death. I see the coming and going of the ages and..." they paused, staring blankly at the space between their feet.

 

"What," Horse asked finally.

 

"I see everybody's death." The Manmoth looked up to the sky, slowly, and Horse heard a tremble in their voice, suddenly resembling the voice of his friend. "Everybody I bond with, everybody I believe in and everybody I try to save...they all die. I can see it long before it happens, but... I can't ever seem to be able to change it, no matter how hard I try."

And with those words, they fell down to their knees, staggering, and Horse was there to hold them. He didn't think about it, he just did. He felt awkward holding them, no, his friend, while they pressed into him as if the comfort of not being alone would be the only thing to keep them alive.

It wasn't sexual desire, it wasn't love, or friendship that made them embrace and rub themselves against the other man, it was despair.

Horse could feel how Konstantin's own demons were tearing him apart, his ego turned inside-out, the shadows attached to his soul he had collected on so many occasions to save others, sucking on his soul, burrowing deep inside like ticks. He felt how depraved his friend was from real human bonding, as if every contact with a human soul would have left him scarred and terrified of loss.

 

Shell-shocked from the reflections on the other man's soul that he perceived through his third eye, he stood there for a while, holding him; didn't dare to move an inch - whether in body, nor in mind or soul. _So I am not what I seem, a man inside a woman’s body and you, you’re a Sinner, a terrifying beast tucked away within a boy’s soul - or is it the other way round?_

 _And he heard himself speak, hoarse and tired, but without resentment:_ “I guess at the end of the day, we’re all Sinners around here, misjudged, forsaken and misunderstood. Who else would we have to hold on to each other, if not our own kind? If we’d give up on each other, the world would truly be lost.”

 

"You're the only thing that keeps me alive," Konstantin said after what seemed like an eternity, after black turned to blue and the Old Drifter was fading away to take his leave for the night. 

 

"Why," Dark Horse whispered. 

 

"Because... I haven't seen your death."

 

***


End file.
